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Poorly designed

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 8
Date: July 23, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is simply unplayable. The lack of an in-game save, combined with multiple run-and-close-the-doors-behind-you scenes makes it frustrating, repetitive, and boring in places. Scenes which would otherwise be immersive are rendered annoying as they play out over and over again until you make it to the next save point.

The controls are loose, and objects in the world are difficult to interact with unless you can put them exactly in the center of the screen before hitting the action key. Sanity effects are good sometimes, but are often irritating -- your character gets slower whenever he needs to be fast, and can't see anything whenever he needs to shoot.

Even all this would be forgivable for the story. I have long lamented the lack of story-based games, and for that I kept playing long after the gameplay made me sick.

I finally stopped playing when I encountered a third game-scripting bug that made it impossible to progress. I found ways around the first two in a walkthrough, but now, unable to find a solution except to load an older savegame and hope, I have given up. This game is going directly into the trash.

waste of money

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: November 25, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This could be a great game, except for the fact that you will be forced to play the same scenes over and over until you get the timing right. Run, open door, lock door, open next door, lock door, move cabinet, open door, lock door. Oops, I accidentally opened the door instead of locking it. Let me watch the cutscene again and try to get the timing right this time...

Don't waste your money.

Frustrating!!! Adventure aspect gets ruined by forced timed action sequences.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 20 / 27
Date: December 01, 2006
Author: Amazon User

"You Are Dead". You will see this screen over and over and over again. You can't skip the many cutscenes so you will have to sit through the same ones over and over again. You can't save so you have that to add to the frustration.

In only the second level of this game called "Attack Of The Fishmen" you will want to hurl this game straight into the trashcan! So very frustrating. You are forced to quickly lock doors behind you in several spots, open windows, and make perfect jumps while being chased. You must do all this without any slight error in timing at all. There are no saves in this game, except for checkpoints in other areas, so you will repeat these types of scenes over and over and over.

This game also has a strange feature that you can't turn off in the options. The main character evidently has a panic attack constantly which makes the sceen constantly go blurry with a loud beating heartbeat. This blurriness makes it down right impossible sometimes to make the many jumps required. It also makes you wonder if this guy chose the right career path or maybe he left his blood pressure meds at home. It is very distracting!

The game is also very linear with cutscene after cutscene. There are so many cutscenes it feels like you are watching a movie sometimes instead of playing a game. The forced timed action sequences should never be in a game without a proper save function.

Not so much. Totally linear plot and action. Boring.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: August 01, 2006
Author: Amazon User

On the upside, it is very Lovecraftian. Original graphics. But, Not much investigating going on. No need to read clues, just start shooting the badguys, open doors, pull levers to solve the same gay puzzles on every other game, and on and on an on without any development in the plot. Innsmouth is less like a town, and more like a straight alley. Start here, do this, then go here, then do this, and only afterward can you do the next thing, which is just like the last thing you did, and shoot up all the citizens of Innsmouth. The initial getaway level is decent. The citizens are breaking in, and you go room to room and out the window and across rooftops, but after that the whole game is downhill. I recommend Clive Barker's "Undying." instead. It's not very investigative either, but it feels like more of an adventure, and its just as creepy.

Did H.P. Lovecraft ever dream of this?

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 10
Date: October 16, 2006
Author: Amazon User

It's quite signifigant when a video/computer game is made on the sole basis of a work of fiction, written over 80 years ago. Perhaps a bit daring, Bethesda Softworks delves into the dark creations of H.P. Lovecraft to conceive and construct a FP/survival-horror title worthy to the enigmatic name of Cthulhu.

However, the question is whether or not the game is, in fact, able to do justice to the sea creature's prestige.

Dark Corners of the Earth is a detective/action game, focusing on puzzle-solving, espionage, and running for your life. The atmosphere is dark and foreboding, and the story does indeed follow that of Lovecraft's original Cthulhu Mythos (namely, the majority of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", and a touch of the actual "The Call Of Cthulhu). The game is constructed in a way to shift between slow, foreboding gameplay, and fast and frantic scrambling. Struggling against both humans and monsters, players unravel a supernatural tale that challenges their sanity and seeks to ensnare it within the clutches of manic insanity.

That, at least, is the hype.
To point out most of the potential errors of the game, I personally find it to be less scary than other games of the same genre (Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and Doom come readilly to mind), for despite plenty of disturbing imagery and encounters with both human and inhuman hostiles, there never truly exists a dread-filled feeling of "I-gotta-get-away/kill-it." Likewise, the attempted feel of urgency (when you're being chased by multiple enemies) eventually comes across as unwanted.

Concerning the gameplay, there is an unevern distribution of ups and downs. For one, the healing system (using different methods - bandages, stitches, splints, etc. - to heal different wounds) is cool, but the rest of the scheme is generally old-hat: save by star-points, wield short/long-range weapons, utilize items to create effects. Not incredibly innovative, the game does however take credit for the unique panic/sanity system, which, according to the situation, will drive the player-controlled character into delusions and other psycho-induced effects...sadly, though this is meant to heighten the playing experience, it comes across largely as a hindrance, often destroying any chance that you have of escaping a dangerous situation (ex.: blurred or obscured vision clouds an escape-way). The weapon system is realistic, which essentially plays against you, but the enemy AI leaves a lot to be desired in terms of common sense and reaction to stimuli.

The game's story is its strongest asset, which is accompanied with surprisingly-good voice acting and decent (if outdated) graphics.
Alas, this game gains much of its value from the Cthulhu name, and would undoubtedly be rated lower had it been an original title.
Simply-said, this game lacks a decisive original touch to distinguish it from the many other titles boasting many of the same features. The game falls short on many of its hyped aspects, and even though it may be a fun romp during the first-time-through, there's not much to be gained by it, other than some knowledge on the works of H.P. Lovecraft (for which you'd be better off picking up the book).

Could have been game of the year but.....

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: August 15, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Here is the simple low down on this game. It's one of the best horror games ever made, and follows the Lovecraft Mythos really well. Fun and creepy.
Bad news, it has 1 million bugs. No matter how nice your computer is, there is a decent chance that at some point in this game it'll bug up and you won't be able to finish it. And the company doesn't intend on releasing any patches, ever. 5 stars for the game, 1 star for the programing.

agree with previous reviews - designers mar a potentially 5 star game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: January 06, 2007
Author: Amazon User

look I will make it short-the story is well written, graphics are OK, puzzles almost always make sense resulting in a great atmosphere for this horror game. What takes 2 stars off its ranking is asinine game design making fights overly punishing and frustrating and the game is also way too long. Either monkeys were used as testers or the designers do not give a XXmn about players enjoying their moneys worth. I feel cheated that I won`t be able to finish the game after investing 15 plus hours because of bad game design. I hope designers got paid accordingly. Totally unacceptable

Supermodel with Head-Lice

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: April 23, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This game has a lot of good ideas, and implements a number of them surprisingly well. In fact, almost everything innovative that this game tries, it succeeds at. Going insane feels like you're going insane, bolting doors and shoving bookcases in front of them to stop pursuers is adrenaline-pumping, having to treat the proper injuries that result from different ways of taking damage makes sense within the game, and the creepy atmosphere is so pervasive that you're practically suffocating on it throughout the entire game.

Where it goes wrong is the most trivial, inane, annoying details.

Checkpoint's frequently come only before extensive cutscenes (upwards of several minutes), or before long walks or tough obstacles, so if you make one mistake, not only have you lost all the progress since the last save, but you frequently have to repeat the same lengthy cutscene or retread the exact same long hallways over and over.

Frequent hard-to-see insta-kill traps often leave me wondering exactly why I died, which compounds the problems of the last point.

The game frequently mistakes an intent to bolt a door as an intent to open a door; trying to close a door behind you, oftentimes the door will catch you and push you into whatever is chasing you; for the game to register your attempt to close the door, you have to be standing just so, which can be very hard to do when you're trying to protect someone that's following you.

Then there's the glitches: if you run the game on Vista, a certain segment involving the artillery guns of a naval ship won't work right, and you'll have to download a save game just beyond that point. Also, the final segment in the game is almost literally impossible without some extremely precise bunny-hopping, and I ended up having to cheat to beat it.

In short: this is a very, very good game, much better than I expected, but you have to be able to stomach more questionable design decisions, poor scripting, and buggy interfaces than it's reasonable to expect of any player. A supermodel with headlice, right next to Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines.

Will they never learn?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 31 / 43
Date: November 04, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Note to game developers: when will you realize that NO ONE on this God's green earth likes to be forced to play the same sequence over and over and over? That NO ONE enjoys to watch un-skippable cinematics over and over and over? That NO ONE likes to be THIS close to finishing a chapter just to get killed two steps short of a "save point" and have to start from the beginning?

What can I say, I'm very disappointed and frustrated. Such a great game in terms of atmosphere, audio-visual effects, characters and story. And yet the gameplay, for the lack of a better word, stinks. You can't save your progress unless you click on a special save icon (and those things are not at all plentiful and not always accessible). You can't get analysis of an item unless it's in the middle of your monitor. You can't skip certain cinematics. There's no crosshair, and no way to aim your weapons, so unless a character is right in front of your face, you're shooting blind - and missing. Healing yourself is a loooong and drawn out process and is easily interrupted, which pretty much eliminates being able to heal yourself during combat.

I can understand that all of the above is supposed to give the game a "reality" effect, the "being-there" feel. And it would have worked... if you didn't have to feel forced to replay parts of the game a hundred times in a row. That's when it stops serving the gamer's experience and becomes incredibly frustrating. Or, as it was in my case, makes the gamer give up on the game.

It makes me especially frustrated to have said all this, because "Call Of Cthulhu" IS a good game in all other respects. I WANT to play it, but I simply have neither the nerves nor the time for nonsense that comes with playing it. Some parts were completely engrossing and utterly enjoyable, particularly the beginning two levels. But after that, certain parts are simply unplayable. It's a shame when a good game has to go down a garbage shoot because of poor gameplay design.

Intense well-written game, hate the game play

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 17 / 21
Date: May 08, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Featuring an intense storyline, the game boasts a well designed interface (though seemingly older technology) and involved first-person perspective - the use of colors, fading, and distorted vision (such as vertigo and "fear shakes") to heighten the "being there" feeling of the player. The biggest problem I have with the game deals with the fast-thinking and forced-action gameplay. Often, you (as the player) are required to react quickly and often for what I consider an extended period of time. With absolutely no room for error (and no way to continually save your progress), you find yourself clumsily groping around to figure out where to go or what to do; this groping about is infrequently intuitive. And if you don't figure out what to do quickly, so sorry, start over from the beginning of that scene. The other big problem I have is the save-game system. You can only save when you find the same-game icons. So, if you want to save, you have to hope that you didn't lose access to the last one (or hope that another one is coming up). While this style of game play may highly appeal to some, to me it was a dud.

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